I had a whole column planned for this week. In fact, I had some of it written. It wasn’t bad. You probably would have thought parts of it were funny. But how can I write a column about Yale minutia — dining hall food, bugs in rooms or some such petty complaint — when I’m just so damn happy about Tuesday’s election results? Indeed, how do I have the time to write anything at all, while I’m so busy planning for my big blowout Trifecta Party?1

That’s right, I’m throwing a Trifecta Party, and you’re all invited. We Yalies aren’t placated by mere drinking and carousing. We want some gimmick, some theme, some excuse to dress up in outrageous clothing (if you consider still-hideous 80s garb to be outrageous) to distract us from the 20-page papers we have waiting for us at home that will be completed under the cloud of tomorrow morning’s hangover. It’s really the only way for a pseudo-intellectual to celebrate.

And now, do we Yalies ever have something to celebrate. The GOP has taken control — of EVERYTHING! That’s right, the Republicans now control the U.S. Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, and Executive Branch. Trifecta, y’all! But this isn’t just any old trifecta.

The last time Republicans had one-party rule over the U.S. government was for two years during the Eisenhower Administration — and nothing happened. One cause of the inactivity was the political gulf between Eisenhower, a moderate Dewey branch Republican, and his Congressional wing, which was controlled by Taft Republicans. Another was the fact that nothing happened in the 1950’s. Nothing at all.

During the 20th century, more than half of all elections have produced unified government. But those governments have been paralyzed, passive or moderate as often as they’ve been productive, active or radical. Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, tried again and again to enact laws that would allow him to hunt moose in the Rose Garden but was fought constantly by his own Republican Congress.

What makes THIS trifecta so special, nay, so CUTE, is that right now the Republican party is deeply conservative, heavily unified under our President’s agenda, and generally fed up with the concepts of “liberty” and “justice.” This total Republican administration has nothing but time on its hands (before Bush’s 2004 re-election) and nothing to do but screw everyone (but their own party).

That’s why I think a Trifecta Party will be such a banging success! My theme: everyone gets screwed! Can you say that about any party you’ve ever been to — the virtual guarantee that no matter who you are, you will sleep with someone before night’s end? I doubt it. And that goes for you, specifically — I mean, you’re not exactly the belle of the ball. Come on, admit it.

But never fear, ugly. As host, I have complete control over my party, and I say you will get screwed. It’s as good as done. Who’s going to oppose me? The Democrats?!

In the great tradition of theme parties at Yale, I will expect you to attend my Trifecta Party in costume. Simply dress up as any interest that, in the coming dark age of Republican rule, will be completely destroyed. Maybe you’d like to come in a coffin, to represent the estate tax, which will be permanently repealed. (To all those of you who still remember the 2000 elections, the estate tax was called the “death tax” by the Bush campaign. He, or more likely the puppeteers who move his hands and mouth, wanted you to think that you have to pay taxes when you die. In reality, this is a tax imposed on those with estates worth over $250,000. But that didn’t keep Country Joe Dumbshit from voting Bush because he thought his family was going to get his daddy’s antique piss-pot taken away by the federal government when he died in a self-inflicted hunting accident.)

Or perhaps you’d like to dress up as a big fetus, to represent partial birth abortion — which will be banned under the new, awesome trifecta. Why? Well, you know, because of all those teenage mothers who wait eight months to abort their children, just to piss off their parents.

Better still, dress up as a polar bear whose habitat will be destroyed when Bush & Co. start drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I myself am dressing up as Han Solo, in a subtle-but-not-TOO-subtle reference to SDI, the national missile defense system, nicknamed “Star Wars” by Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan, you say? You mean SDI has been around since the Reagan years? Oh yes, dear reader. “Star Wars” was an idea hatched by Reagan himself, rocket scientist that he was, in the 1980s. And due to its TOTAL INFEASIBILITY, it’s been languishing in development for the past 22 years. It took George Lucas less time to make his own computer-generated “Star Wars” prequels. Granted, they were shitty. But not as shitty as SDI.

Maybe you’d just like to come to my trifecta party as you are — dressed as yourself. Because in the end, it is YOU that is going to get screwed by the government now. It is you, Yalie, who will graduate into a country at war, a country that has wasted its God-given resources, a country that’s a farce of the principles on which it was founded. It is you, and it is I, who will have to clean up the shitstorm that at this moment is headed our way. Do not doubt that this will be a task that takes up our entire lives. Sorry. Hope you didn’t have anything else planned.

The difference between the real world and my trifecta party can be reduced to the fact that you don’t have to clean up a thing at my place. I’ll just make my roommate Matt take care of all that like the little Cinder fella he is. Because in spite of my party’s theme, Matt will never get any play. Ever.

Greg Yolen bio info.